Britain

The EU election in Britain

A very European country

BY VOTING in their millions to reject the European Union, Britons have revealed what a European bunch they really are. The storming success of the UK Independence Party (UKIP)—which wants Britain to leave the EU but came first in yesterday's European Parliament election—has aligned the country with the likes of France, Denmark and Italy, where other such Eurosceptic parties did well. British voters have joined their continental neighbours in a collective howl of anguish at Brussels, globalisation and the 21st-century world in general.

Of the three established parties, the Liberal Democrats were the most obvious losers. They shed 10 of their 11 seats in the European Parliament. For a party of Europhiles who take European democracy more seriously than most, and coming after a dismal set of local election results on Thursday, it was a heavy blow. The two senior figures deployed to put the party’s case on television, Tim Farron and Danny Alexander, looked ashen-faced and almost lost for words as the litany of failure was put to them. Their leader, Nick Clegg, was not to be seen. He would probably face a leadership challenge in the coming weeks were there an obvious candidate to replace him. Fortunately for the deputy prime minister, there is not.

The results of the opposition Labour Party were arguably even worse—relative to expectations, at least. It had long been assumed that the Lib Dems would perform terribly. The party had briefed that it might lose all of its MEPs, for example. But Labour really should have come first (several polling firms had predicted that it would), or at least close to UKIP’s score. Instead, it ended up three points and four European Parliament seats below the insurgents, and only a fraction above the governing Conservative Party. It had, to be fair, picked up seven seats to end up with 20, but even die-hard loyalists conceded that it had been a bad night. The results were barely in when accusations started to fly. An article in The Times told of poisonous briefings against Michael Dugher, one of the campaign managers. Further such murmurings are expected in the coming days.

The Conservatives got off relatively lightly. Governments rarely win European elections and David Cameron had spent the past months bracing his troops for a terrible showing and planning a post-election restart (a reshuffle, some new messages and maybe a policy announcement or two) for the coming week. Winning 19 seats (down seven from the 2009 election) was hardly a stellar performance, but better than had been expected. The Conservatives are now looking ahead to the Newark by-election on June 5th. Holding the seat would help the prime minister further cement the sense that things could be worse.

And UKIP? Its leader, Nigel Farage, described the victory as the most extraordinary political event in the past 100 years. This was audacious hyperbole, but the scale of the win is undeniably impressive. UKIP won 28% of the vote and became the first party, other than the Tories and Labour, to win a national British election in over a century. It picked up support across the country (improbably winning a seat in Scotland), but in particular in those places where it can give the sitting MP a run for his money in the general election campaign next year. That enables the party to confidently concentrate resources in such constituencies in the intervening months. In one, the Lincolnshire town of Boston, it won a vote share of 52%.

The result of the election has sparked energetic debates, particularly in Labour circles, about how to deal with UKIP. Some think the opposition needs to toughen up its policies on Europe and immigration to win back blue-collar support. Others retort that doing so would be a transparently craven attempt to curry favour with voters, who would see through it and feel yet more vindicated in voting UKIP. A third camp reckons that the worries are exaggerated, noting that European election results are rarely reflected in general elections, which use a different voting system, concern different issues and are taken much more seriously.

To truly know UKIP (and thus how to compete with it), the mainstream political parties need to look at its similarities with Eurosceptic and populist parties elsewhere in the EU. The parallels are striking, suggesting that its rise is about more than just a fumbled election campaign, peculiarly British policy debates or Britain’s island mentality. In different countries across the EU the same process was in motion on election night: the electoral coalitions that have traditionally propelled social democratic parties to power were fragmenting. Their voters were dispersing in various different directions. Some were turning to green parties like the Austrian Grünen, others to far left outfits like Syriza in Greece, and others were going to single-issue parties like the Feminist Initiative Party in Sweden. But a substantial segment of the old centre-left base—the older, white, post-industrial blue collar voters who feel economically and culturally marginalised—went to the Eurosceptic right: to parties (different though they may be in tone and emphasis) like the True Finns, the Front National and UKIP.

These socio-economic forces explain why such parties are almost universally hostile to globalisation and immigration, why they lean towards protectionism and why they engage in the sort of cultural politics that until recently was more common in America than in Europe. It also explains why they rarely thrive in large cities. In provincial towns, villages and suburbs around the continent, people whose jobs and livelihoods have been disrupted by immigration, outsourcing and automation no longer fit into the same social democratic “big tent” as urban professionals, ethnic minority voters, students and public-sector workers. The decline of the trade unions has further added to this sense of alienation from the centre-left establishment.

Britain shares all of these traits with other EU states. Consider, for example, the gulf between the declining former fishing and shipbuilding towns where UKIP did best (places like Grimsby, Great Yarmouth and Ramsgate) and booming, youthful, diverse London, where it was much weaker and where Labour obtained by far its most impressive results. The pattern was almost precisely mirrored in France and Denmark—in fact, in all three countries the main Eurosceptic party obtained 16 or 17% in the capital city but about ten points more nationally.

Much will be said over the coming months (on this blog, among other places) about what UKIP’s success means and what the mainstream parties can do about it. Examples from other countries where moderate parties face challenges from hardliners are likely to prove relevant to this. Already, one obvious case study suggests itself: that of Matteo Renzi, the Italian premier whose governing Democratic Party won a record 41% of votes and relegated the Eurosceptic “Five Star Movement", once tipped to win, to a distant second place.

As the BBC’s election night coverage drew to a close last night, Vernon Bogdanor, a respected political scientist, observed that the chance of Britain leaving the EU in the next five years had now risen to 50%. That may well be accurate. Yet UKIP’s victory simultaneously serves to show that the country is not so different from its European cousins after all—even if Mr Farage (presumably) does not see it in those terms.

Nothing will change not sure why all these screaming headlines.For one the European Union is not a democracy. The European Parliament is subservient to the European Council where the governments of the members states decide things. Then the vote itself while 30% of voters, voted to leave the EU, the majority did not.They will join other pro European parties in the parliament and despite winning almost everywhere the Eurosceptics will get nothing done at all.It's just 5 years more of the same.Hysteria is what I read,earthquakes, but it's not even a tremor.

The success of UKIP in Britain has come about largely *because* they resolutely refuse to talk about questions such as "globalisation" and "free trade". They talk airily about goals such as "we will reclaim our territorial waters, revive our fishing towns and ports and end discards" (an actual quote from UKIP's EU election manifesto).

Those of us old enough to remember the Cod Wars with Iceland know what that means - it means the "55 million a day" that the EU currently costs us will have to be funnelled instead into rebuilding the navy, and we'll have higher military spending and significantly less friendly neighbours. Great idea, can't see how that will possibly go wrong. But "increased military spending" isn't mentioned *anywhere* in UKIP's literature - it's just the logical consequence.

Ditto the globalisation question. UKIP talks, in the vaguest terms you can imagine, about "regaining control of our borders". To the blue-collar voter, that means "import controls and trade protection", which is good. But to the small business, it means "an end to EU regulation that prevents us from outsourcing more of our work to China and India". And UKIP has, so far successfully, refused to enter any discussion of which of these (contradictory) interpretations is correct.

So the question of whether UKIP is "anti-globalisation or anti-immigration" is really entirely in the eye of the beholder. And that's the way UKIP likes it, and they'll try to keep it that way as long as possible. It's known as eating your cake and having it too.

Go on kidding yourself. The other populist parties (FN included) are no more racist than UKIP. If you can find a difference between FN policies and UKIP (appart from UKIP being pro-globalization and the FN being anti) then let me know! The last time I checked both say their respective countries are full, both want to stop foreigners from "abusing" social security and both want to stop foreigners from meddling in their affairs. To me that all sounds anti-immigrant populism, I really can't tell UKIP from the FN or the other populist parties in NL, DK, Sweden or Poland.

I grow increasingly disappointed with more and more leftist opinions by The Economist. I get the impression that should Margaret Thatcher win elections The Economist would label it a rise of populists.
Unfortunately, what was labelled "right" 30 years ago, today is called "far-right" or "populism", while what was "far-left", today is called "left", or "centrist".
Compared to mainstream politicians, who understand very little of everyday life, Nigel Farage has common sense combined with hands-on business and life experience. Perhaps if mainstream politicians, like Barroso, would live for a while near Muslim ghetto eg. in Berlin's Neukolln or in Paris, they would understand why people vote the way they do.
So, I really don't think Nigel's statement about significance of the Ukip's victory is an "audacious hyperbole" (which is quite an arrogant comment on it's own, I’d say). Though I would definitely say that claiming "British voters have joined their continental neighbours in a collective howl of anguish at Brussels, globalization and the 21st-century world in general" is one.
European countries can have free trade agreements, free movement of people and many common policies - without federal Euro government; without common currency which keeps south of Europe in deadlock; and without all the detached from reality, overspending beaurocrats, who everyday let to Europe thousands of Muslim unfit for our culture and opposing our values of freedom and democracy.
One has to be really ideologically obsessed to label it a rejection of "21st-century world in general".

On the contrary, we need a more federal minded EU with or without France actually, surely without the UK. If the question is put to the vote in an unambiguous way, I assume the French will vote for the EU with both hands. What makes today's EU so distant is that it is not yet a truly Union... merely a very organized Free trade zone with scores of legislation but not a Federation yet. The outcome is never certain but the EU has to change at elast the eurozone....Now as for the 24.8% of the FN, roughly 35% of those who cast a FN vote did so to "punish "the Gvt!

"In provincial towns, villages and suburbs around the continent, people whose jobs and livelihoods have been disrupted by immigration, outsourcing and automation no longer fit into the same social democratic “big tent” as urban professionals, ethnic minority voters, students and public-sector workers. The decline of the trade unions has further added to this sense of alienation from the centre-left establishment."

That is a very very adept summary of what ails Europe. A new formula is needed and without one, liberalism will be in real danger.

The far right may have the remedies for quote "the concerns and worries of people with relatively lower socio-economic profiles" unquote; many do not fall into this bracket including myself at the expense of sounding condescending to them and their vote including my own is due to a need for political change and for expression and freedom without fear!!! I agree there is a need for development, the need lies within liberal, moderate right and left wing governments to develop their policies and level of earshot for the benefit of the people who put them there in the first place!!

"Euroskeptic" has become a crutch for too many pundits, especially those of this fine publication -- the term hardly means anything anymore. That said, this is surely a critical juncture for the EU: It's time for "coffee shop socialists," to quote a previous commenter, to acknowledge that common sense, right-of-center fomentation is more than a fad among the old and bigoted. Though the need for a new normal is glaring, it is important for the center and left, as well as the thoughtful factions on the right, to articulate the case for cooperation.

I need to disagree with this statement: "In provincial towns, villages and suburbs around the continent, people whose jobs and livelihoods have been disrupted by immigration, outsourcing and automation no longer fit into the same social democratic “big tent” as urban professionals, ethnic minority voters, students and public-sector workers."

Their jobs and livelihoods haven't, in general, been affected directly. If anything, as the extensive coverage in this magazine shows, the issue is that they have fallen behind, sometimes way behind the urban centers like London and Paris, the places where immigrants most often are (outside of the oddities of agriculture in the US). It's that the urban centers have become more attractive.

But in terms of election, if the other guys might send a bunch of people who look and act like x, then the people I want to send are those who match up well with x. In other words, some of the vote is principled in the sense of gamesmanship and making up a side that can play this game well. You as a voter estimate what the others will do and that plays into your choice.

The European elections are a complete farce. They have nothing to do with national politics where the real action is. I happen to think that Europe is potentially a huge economic force. But all of this is a side show. No one outside Luxembourg has heard of Juncker. And can anyone name his opponent? Reminds me of Douglas Adams where hairdressers and management consultants were sent to another planet and only slowly realised why they were there

So, the Tea Party phenomenon rears its addled head in the EU. This is no surprise.

It seems the more information the average citizen is presented with, the more likely she is to conclude that the traditional party system does not care about her quotidian concerns; rather, it seems politicians themselves and the organized interest groups that co-operate with them are the main beneficiaries of the status quo system.

Protest parties logically ensue.

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Against that observation, I agree the phenomenon does tend to show up more in rural constituencies. I don't have a convincing explanation as to why.